Feminists have argued that women’s bodies, appearance, and subjectivity are formedthrough a multitude of regulatory dispositif and disciplinary apparatus. One such disciplinarytechnique has been ‘‘looking’’, evidenced in work on the male gaze, disciplinarypower, misrecognition, objectification, and indirect social aggression. But there remainsa significant gap the role of women’s looking in subject formation, particularly within thecontext of a postfeminist sensibility. To address this gap a poststructuralist informeddiscourse analysis was performed on interviews with 44 white heterosexual Britishwomen (aged 18–36). Four discourses deployed by the participants when talkingabout looking between women were identified. These discourses were as follows:judgmental looking between women is pervasive, judgement is consumption oriented,women’s looks are prioritised over men’s foregrounding a female gaze, and appearanceis the vehicle to recognition. We conclude by highlighting the importance of a postfeministgaze for understanding women’s subjectivities, and how looking works in apostfeminist context to maintain regulation, anxiety, surveillance, and judgement.
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